


A Life of Being Betrayed

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 18:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19025737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Jim feels that he has been betrayed over and over, all his life...





	A Life of Being Betrayed

A Life of Being Betrayed

by Bluewolf

Jim's life, he decided one day, seemed to have consisted of betrayal after betrayal.

He was eight when his mother walked out. William Ellison, finding his older son desperately trying to suppress his tears over his mother's departure, shook his head. "The woman you called 'Mom' was only your stepmother," he told his son with a brutality that left Jim even more upset than he had been a minute earlier. "Your mother died when you were only a week old. The woman who walked out this morning was Steven's mother, not yours."

In hindsight, Jim recognized that it was a multiple betrayal. He had been betrayed into thinking that Grace Ellison was his mother - and she had seemed fond enough of him, but had that too, been a betrayal? Had she simply seemed to care for him, when in fact he had been... what? a nuisance she had tolerated as the price she had to pay to get a rich husband? But even his father's money hadn't been enough for her to remain with them.

The next betrayal, he was willing to concede, hadn't been deliberate; Bud Heydash had been murdered. He hadn't abandoned Jim the way Grace had. But it was still a betrayal; Jim no longer had anyone, with the possible exception of Sally, their housekeeper, that he felt cared for him. But William made sure that he and Steven didn't forget that Sally was only the hired help, and that while he expected loyalty from her, affection was not part of her - well, job.

Jim and Steven had been fond enough of each other while Grace was there; but with Grace gone, William set out to 'toughen up' his sons. He pitted them against each other, in a system whereby only success counted; no allowance was given for mere effort. Their father's attitude quickly turned Steven into a spoiled brat who would do anything for William's approval, and that included betraying the affection and trust Jim had given him when the two were still very young. Jim was eighteen when Steven went one step too far in his perpetual oneupmanship game of 'I do better than you!', by damaging their father's Cobra and blaming Jim.

***

Jim watched his father and brother drive off, picked up the bag he had packed the night before, and walked out. He made his way to the local army recruiting base, and signed on.

Three days later, he was in basic training in Missouri.

***

Jim did well in the army. Promotion came quickly; and the day come when he was assigned to lead a small group in Peru. They were to be defending the Chopek Pass against the infiltration of Peru by troops from Ecuador and also blocking the route to drug smugglers. But their helicopter was shot down, and only Jim survived.

As with Bud, years earlier... academically he knew it wasn't their fault, but he couldn't help but feel that his men had betrayed him by dying.

As the months went by when he was stranded in Peru, he sometimes wondered why his inability to report back to his base apparently went unnoticed; and when another army team arrived, it was to discover that when there had been no word, his unit had all been assumed dead; by then Colonel Oliver had been reassigned and it was his successor who had sent in a unit to see what had happened to the missing men.

Jim had been happy enough in the army, but he had never expected to be betrayed by his commanding officer, Colonel Oliver. So he accepted the honorable discharge he was due.

He took a month's vacation before heading back to his home city - it was big enough that although his father and brother still lived there, he was unlikely to run into either - and joined the Cascade PD.

Not long after he joined the PD, he began dating Carolyn Plummer, who worked in Forensics, and they married just three months later. Unfortunately, Jim had learned too well the lesson that betrayal after betrayal had taught him; he found himself unable to trust Carolyn as completely as he knew he should, and she, feeling betrayed in turn, asked for a divorce within ten months of their marriage. They remained friends, which in a way surprised Jim, but both knew that there was no way they could live together.

Not long after that he began having problems with this senses, but found help in the form of a grad student who knew about heightened senses, and quickly found that he could trust Blair with - well, anything. But Blair was writing his PhD dissertation on people with heightened senses, and when his mother discovered that he had finished it, sent it - with the best of intentions - to a professional editor friend who released excerpts of it, giving Jim's name... That seemed the final, most damning betrayal ever.

But then Blair surprised him by the best reason to trust that Jim had ever known. Blair destroyed his own reputation, threw away his life's work and his entire future, apparently without a second thought, to give Jim his life back.

Blair's declaration that his work was fraudulent cost him his position at Rainier, lost him many friends (though he insisted that the few who remained his friends were the only ones that mattered) and threw him into financial hardship as the bank demanded that all his student loans be repaid instantly.

Jim swallowed his pride, had a quick word with William Ellison, and William saw to the financial side of things. He then went to see the Chief of Police and having proved his abilities to Warren, got the promise of a place for Blair in Major Crime if he completed firearms training.

And off his own bat, William set his lawyers to suing Berkshire Publishing for releasing excerpts of the document Blair had told them wasn't for publication.

The lawyer also approached Rainier with the promise that Blair wouldn't sue for wrongful dismissal (since they had encouraged Berkshire) if he was given the chance to present a dissertation on the work of the PD.

***

Six months later Dr. Blair Sandburg joined the PD as partner to Detective Jim Ellison... and Jim settled back to enjoy his job, backed up by the one man he knew would never, ever, betray his trust.


End file.
